


Viaticum for a Noble Woman

by Eleutherios



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Character Death, Fix Fic, Friendship, Gen, born of feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-22
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-24 07:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/937056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleutherios/pseuds/Eleutherios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor pays one final visit to an old friend and gives her provisions for the journey ahead.</p><p>Dedicated to my friend Maff. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Viaticum for a Noble Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Recommended listening music: Songs of Captivity and Freedom, from the Doctor Who season 4 soundtrack.

There is a woman lying in bed with the covers tucked right up to her chin.  She is very, very old.  Her white hair still has a few strands of ginger in it about the temples that shows that it must have been fiery red in her youth.  Her breathing is laboured, and she is surrounded by her children and grandchildren.

It's been a long life, and she's content.  Maybe she didn't get to do everything she wanted to, but she’s done all sorts of things she’d never have dreamed.  She’s seen the pyramids of Giza, the crumbling ruins of Machu Picchu, even gone on a cruise one year when Shaun’s business had really taken off.  She’d never let him hear the end of it, how he’d insisted he could do it himself until she’d had to elbow her way into managing the thing for him.  Best temp in Chiswick.

She’s been loved by a good man, and grown to love him in return.  It doesn’t matter if she knew that something was missing.  Nobody’s life is as interesting and fun and exciting as they dreamed it could be when they were young.  People grew out of it.

Complications arising from influenza, the doctors said.  They had her on antibiotics, but at this point, she knew she didn’t have long.

It was alright.  Dying in a comfy bed after a long life, surrounded by people she loved?  There were worse things.

Twenty, thirty years ago, she wouldn’t have accepted it so calmly.  She’d be screaming, yelling at the doctors to DO SOMETHING in between ordering her clan of relatives to run and get her snacks.  It’s taken her a long time, but she’s finally learned that some things you can’t change by shouting at them.

She coughs.  It hurts her chest.  Her daughter in law goes to fetch a doctor to give her something for it.

She thinks she must have dozed off, because when she wakes up, it’s dark.  Most of the family have gone home, but her eldest is asleep in a chair by her bed.  Lee.  She doesn’t really know where she got the name from, but she likes it.  He’s such a good boy.  He shouldered so much of the burdens after Shaun died.

She was sad when it happened, of course, but... not as sad as she felt like she should have been.  She’d never really let herself get attached to him.  She’d loved him dearly, but... it always just felt like she was making do.

There’s a man in the doorway.  He’s silhouetted in the light from outside so she can’t see his face.

‘Hello,’ he says, sauntering over to her with his hands in his pockets.  She blinks up at him drowsily.  ‘I’m the Doctor.’

‘Doctor who?’ she asks, and thinks, _I’ve heard that somewhere before._

The man smiles.  ‘You’re not doing too well, I’m afraid.  There’s not much to be done, Miss Noble.’

‘Well, I don’t think you need a doctorate to figure that out,’ she rasps softly, so as to not wake Lee.  ‘And it’s Mrs Temple, thank you, Doctor.’

‘Mrs Temple,’ he says softly.  ‘Yes, of course.  If you’ll allow me to take your temperature...’

He doesn’t produce a thermometer, but he reaches over to touch her forehead.  Even aching and shivery with influenza, she lands a punch on his ribs.

‘None of that!’ she says sharply.  ‘Try any funny business and I’ll give you such a wallop!’

‘That hurt!’ says the Doctor, outraged.  ‘You haven’t changed a bit!’  Lee snuffles a bit, turns over in his chair and keeps snoring.

That pulls her up short.  ‘Have we met?’

‘Oh yes,’ he tells her, rubbing his chest where she’d hit it.  ‘A long time ago, and a long way away.’

‘Funny,’ she remarks.  ‘Most of my friends these days are old or dead.’

‘Oh, I’m old,’ says the Doctor with a mysterious smile.  ‘I’m old alright.  As old as Methuselah.  Well, older!  Oh, Methuselah.  Lovely chap.  Went a bit odd toward the end, but then again, don’t we all?’

This, thinks Mrs Temple, is a bit rich; this Doctor is hardly any age at all, compared to her.

‘Now, if I may continue without being assaulted...’  He reaches over and places his hands on her temples.

She gasps.  She doesn’t know what is happening; this is... more, it’s more than anything, it’s like all the universe is pouring into her mind, every atom, every galaxy, every inferno supernova, every sun and moon and all the worlds dancing in their orbits.  And with it comes a rush of memories long since locked away.  She convulses, clutching the Doctor’s wrists as her mind rushes upward and outward, as if it wants to make ten second’s worth of growth and experience do for a hundred years.

Mrs Temple _changes_.  She has fought and struggled long and hard to learn her lessons; she has become more than the small, petty, loud, vulgar woman she was when she was young.  She has learned a little kindness and a little wisdom.  Anyone who doesn’t improve as they grow older is wasting their lives.  But this... nothing could compare to this.  Memories flood into her, changing every part of her, transforming everything she was and everything she’s become.  Memories of a long streak of nothing telling her to run, memories of excitement and adventure, of terror and joy.  Memories of one shining moment when she was the most important woman in the whole wide universe.  Memories of the best of times.

She remembers _everything_.  Everything that happened and why the Doctor took it away.  All the wonderful things she saw and did and became, and through it all drifts a song, the most beautiful song, one that breaks her heart to hear: _Cum tacent clament; serva me, servato te; dum inter homines, sumus colamus humanita..._

And in her mind, she hears the Doctor's voice, ringing fit to shake the world: _I just want you to know that there are worlds out there, safe in the sky because of her.  That there are people living in the light and singing songs of Donna Noble a thousand, million lightyears away.  They will never forget her... Now, REMEMBER._

The Doctor takes his hands away from Mrs Temple’s forehead, and Donna Noble opens her eyes.  There is a new light kindled in them despite the growing weakness; Mrs Temple was a good woman, a fine woman, and very clever in her way, but Donna Noble is something greater still.  In her eyes is a sure knowledge of splendours and terrors; there is a depth and breadth to her that Mrs Temple never had.  She’s seen so much more.  She knows what’s out there and she understands, truly understands.  She sees the turn of the universe.  She’s more than Mrs Temple now, more than Donna Noble, even – she is, once again, the DoctorDonna, but one who has grown older and wiser – one who has raised a family and experienced loss.

‘Well,’ she murmurs, her old heart racing again like it did so long ago when she flew across the stars, ‘isn’t that wizard?  You took your time.’  Her tone is soft, teasing.  She doesn’t shout at him as she once might have.

‘Donna,’ says the Doctor with tears in his eyes.  ‘Oh, Donna Noble, I am so sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t give me that again,’ she says.  There is still some impatience to her voice, but then it softens.  ‘You look different.’

And the Doctor takes a seat in the chair next to the best mate he’s ever made on all the worlds in all of space and time and they have their last chat.

When Lee is woken twenty minutes later by the sound of her heart monitor flatlining, his mother is sitting propped up against a pillow with her last smile still on her face.  Her wrinkled, knotted hands are clasped demurely in her lap, and in them she holds a shiny brass key.


End file.
